In recent years, Near Field Communication (NFC) has been standardized by the NFC Forum. As a communication mode of the NFC mode, the NFC Forum standardizes three modes which are a card emulation mode for operating as an NFC tag, a reader/writer mode for specifying a memory area (e.g., an address) of the NFC tag to perform reading and writing, and a peer to peer (P2P) mode for mutually communicating data without specifying the memory area.
In addition, as an application using a bidirectional communication mode of the NFC, a protocol is standardized for transmitting a communication parameter necessary for performing handover to another wireless communication method such as a wireless local area network (LAN) (Wi-Fi) from the NFC. By realizing the handover using the NFC, a high-speed communication path such as Wi-Fi can be established only by getting two apparatuses closer to each other. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-207069 discusses such a technique.
However, the P2P mode of the NFC may not be used by a partner apparatus of the communication in some cases. For example, when an NFC chip unit and a host unit for controlling the NFC chip unit are separated from each other and when the host is in a power-saving state, the NFC chip unit is operated only in a card emulation mode. Generally, communication processing in the P2P mode or the reader/writer mode is complicated compared with that in the card emulation mode, the host unit needs to control the communication processing. In addition, there is a case that the partner apparatus does not comply with the P2P mode in the first place.
As described above, if the partner apparatus cannot use the P2P mode of the NFC, the communication parameter necessary for the handover to the wireless LAN from the NFC cannot be transmitted.